Media Briefs: Editor-in-Chief Out at BlackBook

Also: Buzzfeed's new vertical, which doesn't actually exist yet.

BlackBook‘s editor is out. Buzzfeed’s got a new vertical. And The Observer has a softball game against a Foer Brother to get to, so let’s get on with this. Here are your Friday Afternoon Media Briefs:

BlackBook-ing It Out. BlackBook Magazine scored a new editor in chief in January, in the form of Gawker alumnus and former Departures editor Joshua David Stein. Seven months later, they’re looking for a new editor-in-chief. Stein, who will stay with the magazine through the October/November issue, and remain as a consultant through the end of the year, explained over email:

The magazine has never looked as good as it does now and advertising revenue reflects that. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to return to freelance writing and editorial consulting. I am, at heart, not a beast of the office but of the field. I am, of course, looking to find my own replacement, which is one of the blessings in choosing one’s own departure. As I said, I’m very proud of the product and the work the team here has done. And though it is bad news for the industry, there are a lot of really talented people these days freshly looking for work.

LGBT Goes OMG! and LOL: Speaking of hiring, those scallywags at Jonah Peretti’s Rikers Island for Troubled Young Memes and the People Who Invent Them—Buzzfeed—are opening up an LGBT vertical that has “yet to be launch [sic]” according to the job listing for an associate editor on it. This will be interesting. We hear the position—which is in fact editor of the vertical—will report to Buzzfeed managing editor Scott Lamb; they’re looking for someone to add a cultural component to nicely compliment Buzzfeed politics reporter Chris Geidner‘s LGBT issues coverage (which he’s won awards for, we were informed!).

Yahoo! For Good Plans. In her approach as editor-in-chief, Hillary Frey is taking a familiar-sounding (in a good way!) editorial structure in building out Yahoo! News:

I like a beat structure and working in that kind of environment. I think it gives reporters a clear idea of who to go to, who to lean on for advice, for direction and editing input. All of that creates a really important tie between the editor and the reporter. The beat structure at Yahoo is clear, but as we look to developing more content in different areas, we’ll be growing the organization here and there. We’ll be going along with that sort of structure having people really clearly report to specific people.

Cosmo-naut: We once tried writing about the fact that Deadwood was the spiritual predecessor to Girls in that Girls is a show that seeks to separate itself from the popular wisdom and values of contemporary womanhood as perpetrated on the world by Cosmopolitan Magazine, which is owned by descendants of George Hearst, who (spoiler alert) ruins everything in the last season of Deadwood. Anyway: Edith Zimmerman of The Hairpin did a deep-dive on Cosmo for this week’s New York Times Magazine that is no doubt worth reading. We will know once we finish it. [NYT Mag]

Jonah’s Whale-Sized Problem Grows: Tablet contributor Michael C. Moynihan, the guy who busted Jonah Lehrer for fudging quotes, has a little more to say on the matter in response to critiques of his report:

A comment on Jonah Lehrer: I’ve received a few emails and seen a number of pieces/blog posts that ask, in essence, “what’s the big deal”? It’s just a few quotes, after all. As I mentioned, I only looked at the Dylan chapter in Imagine, and nothing else. I’ve since had a cursory look at a few other chapters (including in his previous book, How We Decide), no more than a few hours of checking and a few emails too people mentioned by Lehrer–and I found fake interviews, quotes that can’t be located, and plagiarism. So while one can reasonably debate how serious a crime it is to fudge a handful of Dylan quotes (pretty serious, if you ask me), always remember: no one ever does this kind of thing once, or just in one chapter.

We recently wondered aloud if that was, indeed the case. Maybe so? [@mcmonyihan]

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